Kant Miss Kung Fu Klassics: Five Element Ninjas (1982)

Title: Five Element Ninjas

Director: Chang Cheh

Review:

Five Element Ninjas is a fast paced and extremely entertaining Kung Fu film from famed Chinese director Chang Cheh. It is a film filled with revenge, betrayal, ninjas, and non stop kung fu action! It tells the tale of two Kung Fu schools who are battling to see who is the best of the two. Both schools bring their best martial artist to duel with each other, but only one will emerge as victorious, the best. The desire to be the best martial arts school in the land prompts one of the schools to cheat and so the end up relying on the aid of the notorious “Five Element Formation”, a group of ninjas that is segmented into five groups, each of the ninja groups attacks by using five elements which include: Fire, Water, Gold, Earth and Wood. Will the good guys have what it takes to go up against the Five Element Ninjas?

We're the good guys 'cause we're dressed in white!

Without a doubt, this one is one of my favorite Chang Cheh movies so far. It’s filled with some of the best Kung Fu fights you are going to see on any movie. These actors/martial artists are so skilled and have such speed! These guys are so good you will probably be tempted to hit that replay button to see some of the moves they pull off, I know I did! And the film has such a diverse use of weaponry! This is one of those films where each fight uses a different kind of weapon, each amusing in its own way. There’s giant axes, all sorts of different swords, poles, ninja stars, you name it, you’ll see it on this film. The first ten minutes of the film starts with a tournament between two schools, each school brings their best fighters forward against each other which makes for some really interesting fights. And all this awesomeness happens without the Ninjas even being introduced yet! By the way, one of the most enjoyable aspects for me on this one where the ninjas! You want to see the coolest ninjas on any film? Check this movie out! There’s a whole school of these guys! Stealthy, deadly and with a huge assortment of weapons! I love how a whole bunch of them will jump out of nowhere without making a single sound! These guys will whip out weapons you’ve never seen on any other movie before. So be on the look out for those.

The story though simple, grabs you. The good guys’ teacher is poisoned with a venom that will incapacitate him for three whole months. So he will not be able to use his Kung Fu skills to fight in the schools name, and so his pupils are forced to go up against the other school that is defying them. On their way to the duel a trap is set for them to battle against the Five Element Ninjas. The good guys are not familiar with the techniques used by the FiveE Element Ninjas, so it’s a total massacre, with the good guys getting some of their best fighters literally slaughtered! There is this one gruesome fight where the earth ninjas have knives popping out from the ground, injuring the good guys feet and legs. These knives rip the flesh off of the good guys legs, and he fights as chunks of flesh are hanging out of his legs! But he gives a good fight even though he is practically stepping on his own innards as he fights! Gruesome! Cringe inducing, and also very Chang Cheh! This director loved bloody action on his films! His heroes really suffer on his films.

Hey! Thats four against one! No fair!

Speaking of Chang Cheh as a director, this movie has a lot of elements that you can come to expect from a Chang Cheh/Kung Fu movie. Rivaling schools, Kung Fu fantasy elements, heroes who have to go and train in order to be able to face their enemy (this one being the most reoccurring of all) and finally, I noticed something that happens a lot in Chang Cheh movies: the female is the source of all evil. It’s something that he seems to do in many of his films, where the women are not to be trusted at all. They are always backstabbers somehow (sometimes even literally backstabbers! On this film a female ninja infiltrates the good guys school to get to know their secrets and plans, stirring the roosters nest as they say. Her intrusion into the school is one of the more interesting moments of the film, specially considering what happens because of it. I guess Chang Chech didn’t have the best relationships in the world and this somehow mirrored onto his movies? I don’t know, but the case is he does this a lot on his films! Even in The One Armed Swordsman a female is the one responsible for making the titular character loose an entire arm!

Never trust a female in a Chang Cheh film!

The film is not without its shortcomings though. This is one of the cheesiest of the Chang Cheh films I’ve seen. The Five Element Ninjas sometimes come off as funny, they each dress in the color of their element, the wood ones wear brown garments, the gold ones wear gold, the water ones wear blue and so forth. The wood ninjas were the silliest of all because the hid behind trees and tried to camouflage themselves as the tree, they looked kind of silly. The water ninjas were kind of funny too because all they did was swim around the water, I mean, couldn’t the good guys see them? I didn’t enjoy the use of reverse photography on some of the shots involving the water ninjas emerging from the water. But whatever, this is a Kung Fu fantasy, people float above water, ninjas travel through the earth, disappear, these guys appear to have all sorts of mystical powers, which of course is part of the charm of these movies! One other negative point for me is that to me, of all of Chang Cheh movies, this is the one where you can notice that the exteriors are all sets, with fake skies and clouds. I’ve never really loved this about these movies, but on this one is more evident. Still, the movie is so entertaining that I simply ignored this. Modern Kung Fu films do not suffer from this ailment thanks to the aid of CGI.

But anyhows, once the good guys train to overcome the Five Element Ninjas its payback time and we get treated to the last half of the film which is basically the good guys confronting the Five Element Ninjas yet again, only this time, they are ready for them! It is interesting to see them overcome the Five Elements. This is a great Kung Fu Fantasy and I recommend it as one of the most entertaining and fun ones I have seen to date.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Kant Miss Kung Fu Klassics: Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975)

Title: Master of the Flying Guillotine (1975)

Director: Jimmy Wang Yu

Review:

I find it interesting that Master of the Flying Guillotine, one of the most memorable Kung Fu movies ever made, was not produced by the famous Shaw Brothers Studios but by an independent studio called First Films. I guess, like many of the Kung Fu heroes in these movies, the underdog ended up being better then the “master” at least in this case.

If you ever see this guy in the distance..run to the hills!

Master of the Flying Guillotine tells the story of a Monk out for revenge. This Monk, who is also a Master at using the deadly Flying Guillotine, has just received a message letting him know that two of his best pupils have just been killed by the famous One Armed Boxer. On the message, the fallen pupils ask their master to avenge their death, a request he is very willing to comply with. Problem is, the Master of the Flying Guillotine is a blind man (a quite deadly blind man I might add) so since he can’t identify any one armed men visually, he plans to go around town killing every one armed man that he hears about during his search. The One Armed Boxer is known across the land for his excellent martial arts skills, but will he be ready for when the Master of the Flying Guillotine finds him? It will be titanic duel of master vs. master! To the death!

The story behind this film is quite interesting for various reasons. One of them is that since this film was an independent production, the original film prints were not maintained in the best way possible, as a result, the few prints that have survived across time are not in the best conditions. A similar situation happened with Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis (1927). Metropolis is a film that you never feel you are watching in its complete form, because new reels of the film keep popping up every few decades. Sometimes, a private collector will have an old print of the film that has scenes that no else has seen for decades, and so, a new version of the film pops up with new scenes, making for a more complete experience. Recently a couple of more minutes of Metropolis were found and added, and now we have a more complete edition of the film available. But I'm pretty sure even this "Complete Metropolis" version that is coming out is missing some scenes as well. Same type of situation occurred with Master of the Flying Guillotine. The version that is currently available is made up of various different film prints. The resulting film varies in quality, but is certainly the most complete version of the film you are apt to see. The film looks pristine and perfect in certain moments, while suddenly the film stock might change color and look horrible. Sometimes the film is dubbed, sometimes it will be spoken in Mandarin with English subtitles. Still, even with these imperfections in film quality, the dvd that is available from Patfhfinder Pictures (the one I saw) is in good enough quality. Most of the film looks great, with the exception of a few scenes where the color looks like it’s going to fade away. But this does not happen often, you should be able to enjoy the film just fine.

He might not see you, but he can certainly hear you!

Another thing that makes this films story interesting is that Jimmy Wang Yu directed it. Jimmy Wang Yu is an actor who made a couple of films with the Shaw Brothers, most notably; I remember him from the One Armed Swordsman (1967) and Return of the One Armed Swordsman (1969). Jimmy Wang Yu sort of branched out on his own and decided to make his own films. On this one he took over directing and acting duties at the same time. The result is this amazing classic we are talking about today. Jimmy Wang Yu made some great films with the Shaw Brothers, but I’m actually glad he went out and did his own thing, and I’m glad to see that the result was so good. In my opinion this film is better then some Shaw Brothers films in a couple of ways. One of them being that when they needed to shoot a fight scene that took place in an exterior, they went out to a real location and shot the scene in real exteriors instead of shooting the whole film in fake, cramped looking sets. One problem I always have with some of the Shaw Brothers films (legendary as they may be) is that you can always tell that they were shot inside of a studio because the sky and the clouds look so fake. The way some of the scenes are lighted on the Shaw Brothers productions, you just know they are inside of a studio. This is not the case with Master of the Flying Guillotine. If a scene took place in an exterior, they shot in a real exterior, on location. I loved that about this film because it gives it an extra level of realism, this was something that was missing from many Shaw Brothers films.

Best part of this film for me though is the villain. He is a monk that works for the Ching Dynasty, killing rebels. Which is another interesting aspect of the film, its sort of the rebels vs. the oppressive evil government type of deal, which by the way is a reoccurring theme on these old Kung Fu movies. The Monk is an expert at using the Flying Guillotine a weapon that has a guillotine attached to a chain. He hurls it through the air, the guillotine lands on your head, he yanks the chain and then it’s off with your head! The character is so effective, that it kind of freaks you out every time he appears. He is so deadly that you kind of feel as if death has just walked into a scene whenever he appears. To top things off, the guy is blind! But that doesn’t stop him from being just as deadly as if he wasn’t. I think that what helped the film the most though was its soundtrack. It’s a very techno thing, with beats and sounds, it kind of felt like a John Carpenter film at times. Every time the monk appears, you hear these shrieks and sounds and beats that makes his whole appearance feel like something out of a horror movie for me. The films soundtrack was very effective in that way. The hero of the film, the One Armed Boxer is also a great character. He uses his intellect and martial arts ability to stop the villain, plus, he is awesome because he gets to kick ass with just one arm! He has that amazing punch that will knock the hell out of anybody, when he displays it, he should get you clapping and cheering with glee.

The One Armed Boxer, also known as Jimmy Wang Yu, the films director.

Master of the Flying Guillotine is an interesting kind of film because it uses two characters that has appeared on previous films on their own and united them in one film. That’s right, this film is kind of similar to Alien vs. Predator (2004) or Freddy Vs. Jason (2003) in that way. Actually, the films original title is Master of the Flying Guillotine Vs. The One Armed Boxer. It took the Master of the Flying Guillotine, a character who had previously appeared on a film called The Flying Guillotine (1975) and the One Armed Boxer from a film of the same name and united them. So it’s gimmicky in that way, but at the same time, it’s also a really well made film. It wasn’t just a film riding on a gimmick; Jimmy Wang Yu actually set out to make a great Kung Fu film.

This movie has that classical Kung Fu storyline where various martial arts schools are called to participate in a tournament, to prove which one is the best. A part of the film completely takes part in the tournament, with these outlandish characters doing their own special kind of Kung Fu. These scenes are a highlight of the film. One Indian contender stretches out his arms and legs during a fight! Another one fights like a monkey! We get a great variety of fighters in this part of the film. It also has another element we see a lot in Kung Fu movies: the main character is crippled somehow. Don’t know why they loved doing this on their films, but a lot of these Kung Fu movies make their main character crippled or handicapped somehow. For examples of this check out films like Chang Cheh’s The Crippled Avengers (1978) where the five main characters are crippled in five different ways. The many One Armed Swordsman or One Armed Boxer movies are also good examples of these types of films, or the Zatoichi films where the main character is a blind swordsman. On Master of the Flying Guillotine, both of the main characters are crippled, The Monk is blind and The Swordsman is missing an arm. Interesting thing about these films is that the characters always turn their disability into their advantage, and suddenly they are that much more powerful because they learned to overcome their handicap. Some American films have also used this plot device in films like the failed comic book franchise Daredevil (2003) and Blind Fury (1989) with Rutger Hauer playing a blind swordsman.

Now you know where all those characters from Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat came from!

This is an awesome movie that has this deadly, dreadful, serious aura to it. Its main villain oozes of evil and death! I know I had already recommended it in my Top Ten Kung Fu Movies You Should See Before You Die blog post a while back, but I figured I’d never given it a proper review, so I hope you guys enjoyed my take on it. There is a whole bunch of these films with the Flying Guillotine theme, I’m going to try and find them and review them. Look forward to a couple more Kung Fu Klassics being reviewed in the next couple of days; I am on a Kung Fu Kick and I’m enjoying the hell out of it! Stay tuned!

Rating: 5 out of 5

Kant Miss Kung Fu Klassics: Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1980)

Title: Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1980)

Director: Chia-Liang Liu

Review:

One of my favorite comedies ever (and I’m sure a lot of you guys and gals out there will agree with me) is John Landis’s The Three Amigos (1986). If you guys remember correctly that film is about a threesome of actors who get fired by the studio who finances their films for asking for a raise. Then the unexpected happens! The people of a small town called Santo Poco call upon The Three Amigos to help them stop a villain who is terrorizing their town. They think they are being asked to perform as actors, to play the cowboys that they play in their movies. But what they don’t know is that they are being asked to really go up against the villain known as El Guapo, because the people of the small town of Santo Poco think that The Three Amigos are real crime fighting cowboys! Hilarity ensues. This formula was used again in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder (2008), a movie where a bunch of actors making a war movie think they are going up against actors, when in reality, they are going up against a real life drug traffickers! Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin played with this same premise.

This film tells the story of a group of workers who are being stiffed by their boss. They are getting paid less then minimum wages for their work. That’s right; their salaries have been cut in half! When they complain, they get their asses kicked by their boss’s henchmen. So they decide to play a trick on their boss. They will ask an actor to impersonate a Shaolin Monk and scare their boss into paying them what they deserve! And that’s exactly what they do. They ask a local actor named Chao Jen to pretend to be a Shaolin Monk. The plan being that the actor puts up a show (choreographed along with the workers) to make it look like he has all these special martial arts abilities, which of course he doesn’t. Hopefully, this will scare their boss into paying them properly. The trick works for a while, and the workers get their money. Problem comes when the boss realizes he has been fooled! The boss sends his henchman to kick Chao Jen’s ass to kingdom come! This is when Chao Jen decides to put acting aside and really go to the famous Shaolin Temple to get a real education on Kung Fu! Will he get accepted in the legendary temple of Shaolin? Will he learn Kung Fu and help the workers get the wages they so rightfully deserve?

This characters teeth let's you know that this film is a comedy

Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin is an indirect sequel to the Kung Fu Classic The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978), which is one of the most influential and important Kung Fu movies ever made. This sequel is in name only because it does not follow the story line from the first movie, which ended with its main character San Te finally mastering all the 35 Chambers of Shaolin and all the techniques that each one of them teaches, and then opening his own Chamber, the titular 36th Chamber. This sequel has nothing to do with that storyline. It simply presents us with a whole different story line, which revolves around the Temple of Shaolin. At the same time, both films have a similarity because they are both about one guy going to the temple to get his Kung Fu training, so he can later come back to his home town and show a villain some manners. Another similarity is that like the original, this one stars Gordon Liu playing the main character.

At the same time, both films are very different. For example, this sequel is a comedy while the original film was played deadly serious, without a strand of comedy in it. This second one is a comedy right from the get go. Now, before you go on deciding not to watch this one because it is essentially a comedy, let me tell you one thing: this is actually a good sequel to the original! Even though it has comedy in it, it’s still a good Shaolin Temple/Kung Fu flick. The fact that it’s different in tone doesn’t make it a lesser film in my opinion, though I’m sure the comedic elements might turn off a lot of you who wanted a serious Shaolin flick to follow up the classic that preceded this one. And I totally understand that point of view because I felt the same way, until I actually saw this one. It is a fun, though definitely less profound film than its predecessor.

Chao Jen trains by watching

It has the same basic formula of having a newbie trying to master the different techniques that are taught in the temple. When the character emerges from the temple, he is a fully equipped Kung Fu Master ready to take on evil! Which is really where the fun comes into these movies, seeing the characters trying to master the different techniques. Only on this film, he doesn’t really get accepted into the temple. The Monks ask Chao Jen to build a bamboo scaffolding around the temple for the temples 10 year restoration, and that then, if he finishes the scaffolding, he might get accepted. This allows for Chao to invent a new form of Kung Fu using bamboo which he later calls “Scaffolding Kung Fu!” In the films final confrontation he uses Bamboo’s to kick the villains asses. Pretty cool stuff.

Kung Fu Master at long last!

This is a lighter hearted Kung Fu flick, but it’s still very good. If you want to check out a Kung Fu flick that is not so deadly serious about everything, this one is worth a watch.

Rating: 4 out of 5